Anselmo Ramos — Founder & Chief Creative Officer, DAVID
Anselmo talks to TheNextGag about the challenges of opening a creative hotshop, how to do great work consistently and why awards still matter to him.
Anselmo Ramos is the Founder & Chief Creative Officer of DAVID in the USA.
One of the most awarded ad creatives in the world with Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches while at Ogilvy & Mather, he and some partners have successfully launched their own agency, DAVID, that managed to come back from from Cannes this year with 13 Lions for the Proud Whopper campaign for Burger King.
THENEXTGAG: WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE IN OPENING UP A NEW LOCATION IN MIAMI ?
ANSELMO RAMOS: Well, when we opened DAVID four years ago, we always wanted to have a Miami office. The original plan was Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Miami, which was in the original keynote that we put together.
But it took us three years to launch Miami because we did it in phases. First, we launched Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires at the same time. So when both offices got to the right level, we said, “OK, time to get to Miami.” And then we did it.
I used to work in the U.S. for eight years, and both my daughters were born in Miami. I like Miami very much; there was always a plan to come back to Miami one day, so here we are.
TNG: I AM GLAD YOU DID IT. SO, WHAT ELSE WAS IN THE ORIGINAL KEYNOTE THEN?
AR: We just wanted to start a creative hot shop because what we realized is that a lot of big clients nowadays are willing to work with small shops. And when we were at Ogilvy, we were winning a lot of awards like Lions at Cannes, so we were happy. But sometimes, we’ll see that clients would go to smaller, very creative-driven shops. So we said, “Let’s create something since Ogilvy doesn’t have a second network that’s creative-driven. Let’s just start one, and let’s use David Ogilvy first name,” because we are personal.
When we had this idea, we were at Cannes celebrating all of the awards, and at first we said, “Whoa, it’s going to be really hard to use David Ogilvy first name.” But we talked to Hertha Ogilvy who is David Ogilvy’s widow. She is an incredible lady. She is living in Touffou, in a castle in south of France, and she is adorable. She knew us from Ogilvy and she just said, “Yeah, I think that you guys should do it. I think David would be proud.” And here we are.
TNG: I HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING DAVID FROM DAY ONE. CONGRATULATIONS, BECAUSE WE KNOW HOW IT CAN BE DIFFICULT TO LAUNCH A CREATIVE ADVERTISING AGENCY AND TO KEEP DOING GREAT STUFF.
AR: Thanks. We got lucky to start DAVID with big brands, and brands that honestly want to do good stuff. This is because that is what we need in an agency. We need brave clients. We need clients that are willing to take risks and are as passionate in communications as we are. And I think we have that with Burger King, Coca-Cola, and Heinz, so we are very happy.
TNG: DO THESE BRANDS COME TO YOU BECAUSE THEY WANT CREATIVE WORK OR DO YOU MANAGE TO SELL THEM ONLY CREATIVE WORK?
AR: With almost all of our projects, the clients are coming to us because they honestly want great work, which is great. Sometimes agencies spend a lot of time trying to convince the clients that they should do good work. We’ve all been there and it sucks when it happens, because that means that you are not on the same page. That means that the agency wants to do something more creative than what the client wants.
In our case, we are lucky to have clients that are as ambitious as we are and who want to do good stuff. Sometimes, they push us. They say, “Guys, this is not good enough. We want something even better.” And we are like, “Oh shit, let’s go for it.”
So, we are very lucky to have great brands who are great clients. I tell my team that they have no excuses — we can’t have excuses. Agencies have a lot of excuses: “The client doesn’t but the work,” or “We don’t have great brands.” We don’t have excuses. It’s up to us really. If we don’t do good work, it’s our fault.
TNG: I WANTED TO COME BACK ON THE “INSEPARABLE” CAMPAIGN THAT YOU DID ON MOTHER’S DAY FOR COCA-COLA. WHAT WAS BEHIND THE IDEA?
AR: That idea was very successful for Coke and for the Hispanic community in the U.S. The idea did two things. First, it showed moms and daughters and sons what it looks like to be on the other side. So, as a daughter, you could experience a relationship over time with a mom through the mom’s eyes, and then the opposite. That’s one thing. The other thing that it did very well was at the end of the video, you could actually connect moms with their sons and daughters. I think that was the great thing — you would actually be able to connect you to your mom and they could talk for real, because sometimes, when they (the Latino community) live over here in the U.S., they don’t have a lot of money to call their families in their original countries. So that was what the video did and what our ideas was: to connect moms to their kids.
TNG: ALSO, CONGRATULATIONS ON THE INCLUSION IN THE “30 MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE” LIST OF BUSINESS INSIDER.
AR: Thank you. I was very happy. My mom also was very happy.
TNG: YOUR MOM WAS HAPPY ABOUT THIS. BUT IS IT IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO GET THIS KIND OF RECOGNITION?
AR: I think it is important since it’s recognition of what you are doing. We don’t necessarily do work to get into lists or to get awards, but what we do is we try to do the best that we can. We are very tough on ourselves, very critical. We always try to do something that is new and fresh that hasn’t been done before, and awards and lists are just consequences of that. But yeah, it feels good.
TNG: BECAUSE, I AM WONDERING, FOR SOMEONE WHO WON SO MANY AWARDS YOU COULD GET BORED AND NOT EXCITED ABOUT IT ANYMORE.
AR: Here is the thing: everything that we’ve won so far is done. It doesn’t really matter. It helps us, because clients come to us and say, “Woah, you must be good because you won so many awards. Just give me the same thing.” I get this all the time. Clients come to us and say, “Give me that Sketches thing. Or give me a Proud Whopper.” Well, it’s not that simple. We need to sit down and talk, understand the brand positioning, the consumers, the competitors and we need to believe in something. Do we have a clear brand positioning or not? And let’s discuss executions and all that. What’s your vision? Do you have the same vision that we have? You need a lot of factors to work together in order to do something great. I think Sketches was the perfect storm. It was like great clients, a great brand, great brand positioning, great production company … everything was perfect. It was almost a dream. But it is very hard to make that happen.
But this is all in the past. It doesn’t really matter. We need to look for something new. And something new is something you never really know will work or not, so you have to be open to that.
TNG: WAS IT EASY FOR YOU TO STEP UP FROM YOUR POSITION OF A CREATIVE AND TO BECOME THE HEAD OF AN AGENCY AND HAVE TO MANAGE ACCOUNT, PRODUCTION AND STRATEGY PEOPLE?
AR: I guess I am still learning — I am learning every day. One thing that we try to do at DAVID is to hire people that are as passionate in communications and this business. Your department doesn’t matter. If you are an account person or if you are a planner, if you are a media guy or even a finance guy, you should like this business; communications is what we do every day. If the entire agency is passionate in what we do, then it is easier to manage people because we are all trying to do the same thing. There is no different agenda. It’s all the same. Everyone is trying to do the best work possible.
Anselmo Ramos
Founder & Chief Creative Officer
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